


High Stakes and Higher Flying

by muggle95



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anxiety, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Despite the collection this is in this is more shippy than whump, F/M, Fear of Flying, I'll make up for it in later prompt fills, Kinda?, Prompt Fill, bets with ulterior motives, losing a bet, new relationships, romantic broomstick rides, summer shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 03:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18792082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muggle95/pseuds/muggle95
Summary: Hermione is a Gryffindor, and if it takes a bet to force her to face her fears, at least she's facing them





	High Stakes and Higher Flying

**Author's Note:**

>   
> For the prompt "Losing a Bet", requested by @dove-actually on tumblr
> 
> Also published as a [rebloggable post on tumblr](https://muggle-writes.tumblr.com/post/184808410186/bad-things-happen-bingo-losing-a-bet)

“C'mon, Hermione, we need a sixth,” Ron pleaded. “Three on two isn't as fun.”

“Ron, no. You know I'd much rather watch,” Hermione insisted. She tried to step away, to sit down with her book and read, and keep her feet firmly on the ground.

“Please? you can play Keeper," he offered. “That way you won’t always be in the middle of the action.”

“I’d really rather not,” she insisted. Harry shifted his broom from one shoulder to the other, clearly impatient to be in the air, but also unwilling to leave her behind until everyone agreed that she was staying on the ground.

Ron was still on the ground, half mounted on his broom while holding a second out to her, but the other Weasleys had none of Harry’s hesitations. Ginny was far above everyone’s heads, testing how high she could climb around the edges of the clearing before Mrs. Weasley scolded her, and then diving, so steeply that just watching made Hermione's stomach clench, before climbing again, testing the limits. Although they were flying lower, Fred and George appeared to be trying to tackle each other off their brooms. Neither activity made joining in seem more appealing.

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

George’s whoop of laughter interrupted their argument as he made a muddy crash landing. He popped up hardly a moment later, still laughing, before even his mother could worry about him being hurt. Meanwhile, Fred swooped down beside the cluster of almost-fourth-years, grinning triumphantly. “Ronnikins, I think it’s a lost cause,” he said, shaking his head with mock solemnity. “Hermione is scared of flying, but she’s not scared of crashing, she’s scared she won’t be the best.”

“That’s not true!” she protested, trying to quell the guilty flinch at his words. Yes, she was scared of flying and yes, she knew she wasn’t the best at it, but causation went the other way …right?

“Prove it,” Fred demanded, with a wicked glint in his eye.

“I…” Hermione hesitated. She wasn’t exactly one to back down from a challenge, but that mischievous expression made her certain that pranks would be involved, and she was barely willing to fly on a broom already.

“How about this.” Fred paused, and with a quick twist of his wrist, he was hovering ten feet higher, so Ron took the brunt of George’s revenge mud-attack.

Ron dropped both brooms in favor of tackling George back into the mud.

“I bet you,” Fred said from her other side, suddenly flipping over to hang upside down from his broom, holding on with only his knees, and easing his broom downward until his face was even with hers, “that I can ride my broom, upside down, like this, for longer than you can stay in the air riding normally.”

Well, if the prankster grin was going to interfere with Fred’s flying and not her own… “Fine,” she snapped. “What are the stakes?” There was no way he could keep his balance like that for more than a few minutes, especially if he started moving around. She could last on a broom for a few minutes.

Fred’s grin got even wider, though it was hard to tell exactly which grin that was – challenging? pleased? anticipatory? – with his face upside down and turning red. “When I win, you have to let me take you for a ride on my broom.”

“And when I win, everyone has to leave me alone to read when I want to, at least until we leave for the Quidditch World Cup,” she demanded, heart pounding already at the challenge and at the prospect of flying even as high as Fred was.

“Now come on, that’s not fair,” Fred chided. “You’re making a bet with me, you have to demand something from  _me_ , not from everyone else.”

Hermione scowled. “I want you…” what  _did_  she want? “When I win, you have to warn me before you cause any explosions, in your room or otherwise, for the rest of the summer.” The irregular, loud noises were at least as disruptive to her studying as her friends' desires to hang out were, and the explosions didn’t have three years worth of fondness built up to encourage her to forgive them.

Fred didn’t even hesitate. “Done,” he agreed, offering his hand, and they managed an awkward handshake that would have worked much better had he been right side up. She was briefly concerned at how fast he agreed, despite how following through might force him to stop experimenting altogether, because she doubted the explosions were planned, but now they had shaken on it. It was too late to back down.

Harry helpfully picked up the broom that Ron had been trying to force into her arms. Hermione procrastinated by finding a safe, dry place to set her copy of  _The Magic of Theatre: What Muggles Don’t Know About the Bard_ , but all too quickly, she had no excuses. She accepted the broom from Harry, and swung a leg over it.

Harry mounted his own broom and kicked off confidently, as Hermione rose, wobbly, a foot and a half into the air. She didn’t have to look at her knuckles to know they were turning white, where she had the handle in a death grip, but also she was very deliberately not looking at her knuckles, since that would mean looking down past them at how far away the ground must be.

Harry stayed near her momentarily, but once she was high enough that couldn’t even imagine that she was close enough to the ground that she could stretch her toes and reach it, Harry pulled away and climbed rapidly, quickly getting drawn in to some sort of game of catch-the-apples with Ginny.

Fred, unfairly, kept pace with her, meaning his knees were a few feet above her head, and his face stayed level with hers.

Hermione kept an eye on the trees to judge her altitude, and she stopped rising when she was about even with the lowest apples on the biggest tree.

She came to an unsteady hover, and met Fred’s eyes with her best attempt at a challenging smirk, though it felt similarly unsteady.

Fred smirked right back, and leaned slightly, with the effect that he began circling her. He looked perfectly at ease despite how very red his face was from being upside down so long. Hermione tried to pivot, to continue looking at him, just in case he intended to prank her when her back was turned, but as she tried to turn, her broom jolted downward, sending her heart into her throat.

Ignoring how her hands were now noticeably trembling, and the whole broom with them, Hermione forced her broom back to its previous altitude. She tried to look over her shoulder at Fred, since turning wasn’t working, but that had the effect of her broom shooting upwards faster than she meant, not that she intended to move at all.

She managed to get her broom to stay level again, but she was starting to forget why she was in the air at all. Her vision narrowed in on her hands on her broom, and the ground much too far below. Even the trees around the edges of the clearing seemed to fade into the distance. She was up here to spite someone, but surely she didn’t need to be quite this high. She eased her broom into descending, a little faster than she meant, but feeling nearly in control, and crossed paths with Fred who was still upside down, and climbing at a much more controlled pace.

She couldn’t focus on the look on his face, though he quickly reversed course to follow her down. Why was the ground still so far away?

Except, suddenly, it wasn’t.

She tried to pull her broom level, but she was a tad late, and her feet bounced jarringly off the ground as she leveled out.

But from there it was relatively easy to put her feet down deliberately, if a bit more firmly than necessary. She swung her leg off the broom and found, when she tried to step away, that her knees were shaking too badly to hold her. She collapsed in an undignified heap, but quickly rolled herself upright, scooting backwards out of the clearing to be less in the way. Her back ran into a tree, and she wrapped her arms around her knees. She found herself taking quick, panting breaths, trying to get enough oxygen.

Still, solid ground under her butt was as reassuring as it would have been under her feet, if not more so.

As the adrenaline rush faded, and her head cleared, though her heart was still pounding, she remembered exactly why she had been in the air, and groaned, as Fred came to a perfectly controlled hover in front of her, at a more-than-respectful distance as though she were going to lash out like Crookshanks did when he was cornered.

Fred flipped himself back upright onto his broom almost effortlessly, before landing gently, beaming. “I do believe this means I’ve won the bet,” he said, as though she hadn’t already figured that out. He approached her slowly, watching with just a hint of concern in his eyes as she used the tree to pull herself upright. She had to lean heavily upon it because her knees still wouldn’t quite support her. One of her ankles was sore from her rough landing, but it didn’t feel sprained at least.

“Fair is fair, Hermione,” he said gently, in an encouraging and respectful tone completely at odds with his usual irreverence. “Can I take you for a ride now?”

Hermione got the surprising impression that if she said no, Fred wouldn’t force the issue. But even If she didn’t expect that saying no now would invite more pranks later, she was a  _Gryffindor_ , and they had made a bet. On her honor, she  _would_  follow through.

She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, but she looked determinedly at his freckled nose as she forced herself to nod.

Fred kept one hand on his broom, shuffling backwards and gesturing grandly with his other hand, clearly inviting her to mount in front of him. She left her own borrowed broom on the ground, next to the tree and stepped forward. As soon as her hand was no longer on the tree she was using for support, her knees were shaking badly again, but she could at least walk the four steps to Fred and his broom, and she didn’t collapse again.

She reluctantly mounted his broom, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, to grip the handle in front of them both.

“Trust me, Hermione?” he murmured into her ear, and she nodded, not quite able to speak. She grabbed the handle in another white-knuckled grip, just below his hands, before he could remind her to hold on.

He kicked off, gently, and they rose more slowly than either of them had during their bet. Hermione found her eyes drifting closed, trying to avoid realizing how far off the ground she was, but that turned out to be a bad decision, and the potential for being terrifyingly high had her eyes snapping open again. They weren’t; they were still well below the plane of Harry and Ginny (and Ron and George now too) playing whatever improvised game that involved throwing apples at each other. Some of the apples were rotten and exploded like water balloons when someone tried to catch them, which was inevitably followed with shouts and good-natured complaining.

She smiled fondly up at her friends. When the broom didn’t feel like a wild animal trying to throw her off, Hermione realized she didn’t hate flying quite as much. She still didn’t love it, but the usual panic, the  _need_  to be back on solid ground, wasn’t materializing this time.

Hermione leaned back into Fred’s firm chest, and suddenly realized how intimate a position this was. He was wrapped solidly around her, a pleasant warmth at her back, and she felt her face heating too. She was abruptly glad that her dark skin wouldn’t reveal a blush very easily.

Fred gave her an odd, hug-like squeeze with his shoulder, without affecting his grip on the broom. He must have felt her losing tension, because his mouth was at her ear again, breath tickling as he asked, “are you okay if we try something a little more exciting?”

She hesitated, then leaned back so they were cheek to cheek and hopefully he would hear her answer. “A  _little_ ,” she conceded.

She felt, more than saw, his grin, as he adjusted his grip to comply. Fortunately, “a little more exciting” turned out to be them doing slow laps around the clearing, still gaining altitude at a snail’s pace, rather than going straight up at a similar speed.

Hermione felt herself relaxing further at the proof that Fred was completely in control, and he wouldn’t let her fall.

When they got high enough to join the others, Ron’s face did something odd when he spotted them, and George immediately started flying towards them, wearing his own mischievous smirk, but whatever look was on Fred’s face must have warned them both off. Ron scowled and turned away, and George, without hesitation, reversed course and dove after Harry who was chasing a trio of apples that Ginny had lobbed the opposite direction from the group.

Fred warned her before every new maneuver (including “can we startle Harry by rushing through his blind spot? I promise we won’t be close enough to touch”) and by the time Hermione’s feet touched the ground again, so gently she almost didn’t notice the transition, she was startled to realize she had actually enjoyed herself, and although her hands were stiff from holding so tightly to the broom handle, her knees weren’t shaking at all. She felt a goofy, breathless smile on her face that wouldn’t go away.

Fred trailed after her, broom slung casually over his shoulder, as she collected the broom she had borrowed earlier, and then her book.

“It wasn’t  _that_  bad, was it?” he prodded, though his proud grin made it clear he had spotted her own.

Hermione rolled possible answers around in her mind, before settling on, “I suppose, riding with  _you_  isn’t too bad.” Her cheeks were warm again, and she still couldn’t quench that smile, not even to express her discomfort at the prospect of flying in general.

Fred’s smile turned blinding. “Well, I guess I’ll have to take you flying again some time.”

He led her to the broom shed, to put her broom away. “Do I have to worry about you going flying with anyone else?” he asked, as she set her broom gently in the designated corner.

She turned around, and found herself practically in his arms. She took half a step to close the gap and wrapped her arms around him as she’d been wanting to do for most of the afternoon. He returned the hug, and pressed a tentative kiss to her forehead.

She squeezed him tighter, approvingly, since her own beaming smile was hidden in his chest. “No,” she promised. “Just with you.”


End file.
